Shadow Roads
by Mercuria
Summary: A frantic, lifelong spiritual chase finally yields results. Very, very weird.


Mercuria: Okay, this isn't quite a poem ... but it's not quite prose. I'll be damned if I know what the heck it is, but I like it.  
Disclaimer: I do not own the Orochi series, which is a cool and very freaky Japanese manga. I also do not own the prayer paraphrased herein. Or Snow White. Or Alanis Morissette, may her voice never crack.  
Review!  
***********  
  
"Who are you?" I say, rain dripping down my face. The end of this endless chase has led me into a dimly lit cafe, filled with smoke from smoldering cigarettes.   
The hood she wears is white. I cannot see her face.  
  
I wish I could regain my past. The days dating back to before I had to run ... before I began to dream.  
  
[darkness hides dark/so light is to light  
brilliance is blinding]  
*****  
He turns the corner, moonlight shining on the fluid body of his car.   
  
[life's a bitch/and then you die/so damn it all/and let's get high]  
  
Music sweeps across the sleepy suburban streets, loud and unchecked.  
  
[life's a bitch/and then you die]  
  
He flings back his head and sings along, not looking where he's going. Maybe he doesn't care.  
  
[damn it all/and let's get high]  
*****  
When I was a child, I started to see things behind my eyelids.   
  
[as i lay me down to sleep/i pray the lord my soul to keep]  
  
Bizarre, twisted visions. I would cry at night, it was that horrifying. Or I would laugh in church, it was that delightful.  
  
[stick a knife in your back/watch the blood rush down/blood rush down]  
  
I learned to stop talking about them after a while. No one wanted to hear about my angels wearing blazers or my enormous butterflies with young mens' bodies.   
  
[stop that! you draw like you're mentally disturbed!]  
  
No one wanted to see my bloody animals broken like marionettes or drowned women with free-flowing hair and lovely bloated faces.  
  
No one wanted to see ... me ...  
*****  
"Stop playing these mind games with me!" she cries.  
  
[this is a game/a what/a game/a what/a game/oh, it's a game]  
  
He smirks. "Whatever do you mean?"  
She glares at him now, regal and proud. Then, like a mask has fallen, she looks away.  
"I used to think ... you were what I was looking for," she admits.  
  
[papa, love your princess so that she will find/loving princes familiar]  
  
"Aren't I?" he asks, that upward quirk still present on his sensual lips.  
She shakes her head defiantly.  
"No longer."  
*****  
I'm here now, standing before this mysterious woman.  
  
[mirror mirror on the wall/who's the fairest of them all?]  
  
I'm thinking of all this time I've wasted searching for her. Now that I'm here, I have nothing to say. Nothing that I haven't already answered for myself.  
And yet ... some old spark of childish curiosity mingles with my jaded adult self. I have to know.  
  
[curiosity killed the cat  
so my feline friend  
who's next?]  
  
"Who are you?" I demand again.  
The crowd has left the cafe now, but their smoke lingers on, wrapping around my head. A parting gift. Sweet.  
She shakes her head as if to clear the poisoned incense from her mind.  
"I ..." she begins finally. I wait with held breath.  
  
[everything before has led up to now/pressure's on/make a choice]  
  
"I am I," she says simply. Then, as she pulls back her hood, I realize exactly who she is.  
The woman I've been chasing since my childhood ... the woman who dispelled my illusions and gave me new ones ...   
She is I.  
  
**********  
Mercuria: All right, I know that made no sense, so I'll translate the poem/story/thing so that people won't say "that had no point, loser".  
As I see it, the first cluster, and every other cluster after that, is happening in real time, told from the point of view of the protagonist. The first describes her interrogating her quarry, the next (third) is a memory of her childhood once she discovers a secret world that no one understands, and the last is the revelation, the answer to everything. The other paragraphs are who she never was and who she used to be. These are examining paths she might have traveled, but didn't.  
Gosh, I AM a loser, aren't I?   
Anyway, review please! I know it didn't make sense ... *slams head against wall* It's two A.M. and I'm entitled to being a little fuzzy. 


End file.
